We were always meant to say goodbye
by TheLittle MissVixen
Summary: AU/AH. One shot. At some point, you have to realize that some people can stay in your heart but not in your life.


**Hello there!**

 **First of all I want to apologize because I didn't send this to my beta, I'm pretty much doing this on a whim because I just felt the need to write it down. I've been a little down lately and I guess this is pretty much what came out of it.**

 **Warning, it's sad. Really sad! Please don't hate me, i really hope you like it.**

 **Please, let me a review to know what you think of it.**

 **The song I used was "Already gone" By Sleeping at last**

 **Love,**

 **Sam.**

* * *

 _ **It started with the perfect kiss then we could feel the poison set in. Perfect couldn't keep this love alive**_

She is sixteen the first time she sees him.

She and her best friend Caroline had lied to their parents so the blonde girl could meet her boyfriend on a party, so now Elena was standing in a room full of older people she didn't knew. A million things going through her head but most importantly what her mother would think of her if she could see her in a place like this, with people making out in every corner, alcohol and other things she didn't wanted to know about on every surface. This wasn't a place for a girl like her, she was good girl, the star of the town.

In school they called her The Ice queen.

But she doesn't feel cold at all while looking at him. He is wearing dark jeans and a fitted dark blue t-shirt that shows all the good parts of his body. His hair is dark and a bit long, falling over his eyes. His jaw is square and his lips full and when he looks at her she sees the most enthralling pair of blue eyes.

His lips twitch in a smile as he walks towards her. Her hands start shacking and sweat starts trickling down her back, she shouldn't be here.

"Hello there" His voice is deep and smooth and makes her feel things she shouldn't. _I'm the ice queen_ she thinks, _nobody can get to me._ "I'm Damon" He tells her and she knows in that moment that an inferno has been unleashed inside her

.

.

 **Even with our face held high it never would have worked out right  
We were never meant for do or die**

It was a sunny Friday morning when she skips school one year later.

He kisses her the minute he sees her, pressing her up against the door of his blue Camaro. She tastes of cinnamon and he moans when she runs her hands through his hair.

They climb into the car and drive towards the falls, it has become their place and Elena likes nothing more than to lay on a blanket and make out with her hot boyfriend, Caroline tells her to be careful around him and Elena laughs every time. _Who is she to tell me? She dragged me to the party where I met him._

Elena pulls out from her backpack a small disposable camera and smiles at him "Look what I got" She tells him and he smirks at her

"Get a good one" He says as she places the camera in front of them and starts snapping pictures.

Her hair is blowing in the wind and the sun is warm on her face as Damon drives and she can remember ever feeling so happy.

.

.

 **I didn't want us to burn out, I didn't come here to hurt you, now I can't stop**

She is barely eighteen when her parents find out about him. She had managed to keep their relationship hidden for almost two years but one of her mother friends saw her in town with him and ran straight away to tell her.

 _He is a bad guy, he will destroy you_ her mother says but she doesn't believe her, or maybe she does but she really doesn't care. Because no one makes Elena feel the way Damon does.

She will go away to college in two more weeks so she tells them they can't force her to end things with him. Her mother cries and her father yells and in the end they know they can't do nothing because she loves him and she's never letting go of him.

She sneaks out of her room that night and goes straight to his house. He tells her he will love her forever and they make love on his bed, with his blue sheets tangled in their bodies and the faint smell of tobacco in the air.

"I love you" She whispers before drifting to sleep.

.

.

 **I want you to know it doesn't matter. Where we take this road but someone's gotta go**

She is twenty when she suffers the miscarriage, they had been living in Boston for almost two years while she goes to college and he works as a bartender in a downtown bar.

He holds her as she cries the whole night "This is all my fault" She sobs and he presses soft kisses into her head while the guilt eats him inside, because some part of him feels relieved _. I wasn't ready to be a father_ , the thinks to himself.

"It is not your fault" He tells her but nothing he says can make her feel better. Because tonight she lost a part of herself and something broke between them.

.

.

 **And I want you to know you couldn't have loved me better. But I want you to move on. So I'm already gone**

She takes a bunch of sleeping pills two weeks afterwards.

He finds her unconscious on the bed and cries the whole way to the hospital. Because maybe they were all right, maybe he was going to destroy her in the end.

He stays with her the whole night and holds her hand the whole time in that cold hospital bed. _Ice queen_ they used to call her, but he's the one who feels cold inside.

She is ashamed when she wakes up, she feels so stupid and starts panicking when she thinks he's going to leave her.

"I won't ever go anywhere Elena" He murmurs softly into her hair while he holds her

"I feel so alone sometimes" She sobs into his chest and his heart breaks because of her. Her parent's haven't spoken to her since she left for college and she rarely sees Caroline nowadays.

"We'll make this work angel, we'll make it work I promise"

"Don't ever leave me Damon"

"I won't, I won't ever leave you Elena" He kisses her chapped lips softly "But you have to promise me to never do something like this again"

"I promise" She tells him and she actually means it.

Because she doesn't know what she was thinking, she doesn't want to go anywhere if he's not going with her.

.

.

 **Looking at you makes it harder but I know that you'll find another who doesn't always make you want to cry**

"You're codependent" His brother tells him one night "How can you not see how toxic that relationship is? Is not doing any good to either of you"

He almost punches Stefan that night and leaves the apartment in a fury…because a small part of him knows his brother is right, that this love they have is eating them both and it would end up destroying them.

But he cannot remember any of it once he arrives at the apartment and his nostrils fill with the scent of her vanilla body wash. He finds her in the shower and undresses himself instantly.

It can't be wrong, the love they shared can't be wrong if he feels so high whenever he's with her.

He fucks her wildly against the shower wall that night. His doubts and fears sliding down the drain.

.

.

 **Know that I love you so. I love you enough to let you go**

They break up a year after that.

Elena gets a scholarship in Paris and knows she would be a fool not to take it. She wants to do something with her life not just be Damon's girlfriend. She has been talking with her parents again and seeing things more clearly now. She wants more to her life than a little apartment in Boston and takeout food every night.

He yells and cries and each word is a sword to her heart but she knows this is the right thing. Her parents are right. _Codependency_ they had whispered, she has to be her own person.

No matter how much he begs and cries and makes promises she knows he can't keep, she leaves the apartment that night with her things and takes a flight to Paris the next week.

He drinks himself under the table every night for the next few days. He even brings a brunette back to the apartment one night but he can't even get himself hard because she is not the right brunette, she doesn't smell like vanilla and her hair is not straight so he sends her away.

.

.

 **I want you to know it doesn't matter. Where we take this road but someone's gotta go**

She returns to him two months after she left.

She sobs and begs for forgiveness and swears to never leave again because she has spent the worst two months of her life. She missed him so much that sometimes she felt like she couldn't breathe.

 _Ice queen_ they called her.

She becomes ice when he's not around her to keep her warm.

They make love the entire night that day, it is never enough to calm the need inside of them. It's been too long since they were together and they had missed every single thing about the other.

"I love you" She moans in the darkness of the night "I need you too much Damon"

 _Toxic_ they both think and know that the people around them are right but they don't care. Because they can't breathe without the other.

.

.

 **And I want you to know you couldn't have loved me better. But I want you to move on. So I'm already gone**

Two more years pass until they realize that they can't make it work anymore.

Elena cries when he tells her the best is to end things but a part of her feels relieved, because she had started to resent him, had started to resent the fact that she gave up on her dreams because she couldn't be away from him and she doesn't want their love to turn into an ugly thing full of angry feelings.

He kisses the top of her head and she breaths in his scent one last time "I'll leave first thing in the morning" He whispers and a part of her shatters in that moment, she knows he feels it too, the need to take back his words, to tell her they'll find a way to make it work.

But he knows they won't. Because they have been dragging each other down for too long.

"Some people are meant to fall in love with each other, but not meant to be together" He tells her with a sad smile, quoting that movie they saw together so many moons ago.

They make love for the last time that night and all the time she wants to break down in tears. Because she doesn't want to forget the feel of his arms around her or the way he kisses the soft spot behind her ear.

She doesn't want this to end but knows that it's for the best.

He leaves the next morning and she breaks down once the door closes. She looks around the apartment that it's filled with memories of their time together, her whole life is tied down to this place, to him. Who is she know that he is gone?.

Could they have done things differently? Was there something they missed?

 _Maybe the chances we think we never got, were never outs to begin with._ She thinks bitterly.

 _Ice queen_

She can never be anything else without him.

.

.

 **Remember all the things we wanted**

Six years pass until she sees him again.

She heard that he opened a bar downtown two years ago but hasn't see him since the day he walked away from their apartment.

She is sitting in a little café talking on the phone with Caroline and toying with the diamond on her engagement ring when she sees him across the street. His arm around a blonde woman who has a blue eyed baby girl in her arms.

It surprises her, the instant ache and the surge of coldness in her body, because the woman isn't her, because it was never meant to be her and it's like the pain you get after a really bad injury, it never really goes away.

She closes her eyes and grips the phone tightly on her hand, Caroline is still talking but she can't force herself to answer back. Because it hurts, how can it hurt so much after so long?

He seemed happy and she wants to think he is.

She is happy too, life has been kind to her but a part of her will always yearn but the blue eyed boy who smirked at her across a room full of strangers.

.

.

 **Now all the memories they're haunted**

Seven years pass until he sees her again. He is on a family vacation back on Virginia when he sees her across the street. A tall handsome man presses a kiss to her forehead as she rubs her swollen belly.

His throat clogs and he has to hide behind a tree to avoid being seen. She looks so beautiful he thinks, there is a glow around her and his chest hurts because the man with her isn't him, because it was never meant to be him.

His life is happy, he has a beautiful family and a good job and he has reached everything he ever wanted in life but sometimes at night, when the whole house sleeps and the wind rustles the trees around him he yearns for that sweet girl he met at a party so many years ago.

He yearns for a little apartment in Boston and the scent of vanilla in the air.

.

.

 **We were always meant to say goodbye**

Her parents are selling her childhood home and buying a new one in New York so they can be closer to their children so she is going through her stuff in her old bedroom when she finds it.

Tucked in a corner behind bags and shoes is a brown cardboard box with her initials written with her glittery paint on the top. She opens it and finds all kinds of stuff in there, among them her and Caroline's friendship bracelet, college pamphlets, the corsage she wore to prom and a small disposable camera.

Elena takes the small camera and the picture underneath. The breath catching in her throat when she sees her seventeen year old self smiling as Damon Is right next to her behind the wheel. His ray ban covering his eyes and a signature smirk on his face.

She closes her eyes and for a moment she can feel the wind on her face and the faint smell of leather. She can hear his voice and feel his hand holding hers. Her heart aches for the memory, the memory of a time when nothing else mattered in the world. A time then they could convince each other that the only thing they need in the world was their love.

She stares at the photo once more with a sad smile and then places It in the things she is taking back home.

 _Bad guy_ people whispered about that blue eyed boy she met twenty years ago in a party but she was always able to see the good inside him.

 _Ice queen_ they used to call her but he always melted all the ice inside her.

 **Remember all the things we wanted. Now all the memories they're haunted. We were always meant to say goodbye**


End file.
